Ian Johnston hacked his CSI3003X5 Bench Power Supply to provide for a useful feature that he wanted. The stock system has a up/down push button that adjusts the max current when the power supply is in constant current mode. That is all well and good but there is no indication what you have it set to as you happily click away on the buttons. Of course you could put a short on the output as you adjust it to see what it maxes out at but Ian wanted something more useful. He had a look at the schematic and saw that the digital potentiometer output and the current shunt simply fed an op-amp to detect when the supply has reached the limit. By installing a switch he was able to divert the voltage from the potentiometer to the current display so that he was able to see what he was setting the power supply to without actually having to force it to limit itself.Â
Of course there is always more than one way to solve a problem. Gerry Sweeney suggested that a timer could be added to allow the system to operate as Ian desired for a set period of time whenever an adjustment was made before reverting to normal operation, this would allow the new functionality to work without the need for a switch. Now Ian has the exact functionality that he wanted and it is completely transparent. This is a nice feature that the manufacturer should implement since it does add some ease of use to the supply.